


Children of Blood and Steel

by thatdamnuchiha



Series: In the Company of Elves [12]
Category: Naruto, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Adventure, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Character Development, Crossover, Dimension Travel, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Grief/Mourning, Haruno Clan - Freeform, Haruno Sakura-centric, I have no idea if there'll be any romantic relationships, Not Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Haruno Sakura, POV Third Person, Possible Romance, Rivendell | Imladris, Slow Build, Slow To Update, Strong Haruno Sakura, writing as i go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:14:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26000962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdamnuchiha/pseuds/thatdamnuchiha
Summary: There’s a tale which has been passed down in the Haruno Clan for years – the tale of one Haruno Sakura.The same ancestor which Sakura herself is named after. But the tale is incomplete. Haruno Sakura went missing, presumed dead, many years before. Sakura thought nothing of it when she found herself in that same place, years later, on her last inane mission.Cast adrift in a world which feels awfully familiar in ways she can’t describe, Sakura struggles to piece things together – because the tale of Haruno Sakura isn’t over just yet, and now it’s her time to write the closing chapter.
Relationships: Elladan (Tolkien) & Haruno Sakura, Elrohir (Tolkien) & Haruno Sakura, Elrond Peredhel & Haruno Sakura, Glorfindel (Tolkien) & Haruno Sakura, Haruno Sakura & Original Character(s), Undecided
Series: In the Company of Elves [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1430875
Comments: 6
Kudos: 106
Collections: Down The Rabbit Hole, The Many Iterations of Haruno Sakura





	Children of Blood and Steel

**Author's Note:**

> brain: throws plotbunny  
> me: No  
> brain: plotbunny hops around  
> me: NO  
> brain: throws more plotbunnies  
> me: FINE!
> 
> Why do I do this? Well, I've come to the realisation that I move around between fics a lot, meaning you get more fics on the go at a time, but I'm slower at finishing all of them. That's how I am, I've come to realise, no matter how hard I try to keep the plotbunnies at bay they come for me. So be prepared for sporadic updates.
> 
> Whoops.
> 
> Anyway, this is a more general work, and I haven't decided on relationships, if there'll be any - and if there are they will most definitely be slooow, because this is yet another long work of mine. I've been on a crossover spree, with my go to Naruto/LOTR cross, so here's a chapter for a work which will eventually be completed.
> 
> Eventually.

Summer came early to Konoha that year, bringing with it the sticky humidness of those months, and it was the hot stickiness that one Haruno Sakura hated the most. She was a winter child through and through, despite having been born in the spring. At least in winter one could put more layers on, or perhaps use chakra to trap a layer of heat close by the skin. There were only so many layers she could take off in summer, and it wasn’t like she could use her chakra to cool herself down.

“Sakura-chan!” her mother’s voice echoed through the house – the same house she would soon be moving out of, especially now that she was nineteen. Part of her had expected Sasuke to ask her to move in, but it was slow movement on that front.

Instead, she had found a quaint little avenue a thirty second jog from the hospital, and she was moving out after her next mission which was due later today or tomorrow at the latest and would take at most a week. Then she would be taking up more shift work. Less missions. Less free-time. Less possibilities of meeting up with Sasuke until he came back to Konoha.

She closed her eyes at thought, remembering the meeting with Shizune and Tsunade. “You’re to be taking on more work within the hospital,” they had told her, before promptly handing the hat over to Kakashi… and then… Sakura felt her teeth grind together. She knew of her mentor, and she knew how hard it was for her there, what with her constant drinking and being surrounded by memories she had once tried so desperately to leave behind. But she couldn’t deny she felt cheated. She had earned the Byakyugo through her hard work, and she could break the former three rules which had governed field medics for so long.

Now she was to be relegated to the hospital.

In hindsight, it should have been obvious that was going to be her job. That she would eventually be relegated to the hospital, unable to chase that sense of adventure she had only recently learnt to love. She was going to be stuck in the village, and Sakura had never liked feeling as though she were about to be caged.

Scowling at the spiral of thoughts, she turned to face her mother. “What’s the matter?” she asked, snatching the scroll out of the air – her mother having thrown it, knowing her reflexes wouldn’t let her drop it. “Brilliant,” she muttered, glaring at the name the rest of Konoha had all but forced her to bear after the mission to Wave.

_Uzumaki Sakura._

She hated that name, even if Naruto didn’t understand why. Sasuke hadn’t quite understood either, unsure as to why she’d wanted to continue using a _civilian_ name rather than a prestigious clan name. Sakura snorted at the memory. After all, it wasn’t like the Haruno’s had always been just a clan of merchants. There had been shinobi in their line so long ago, and Sakura was a Haruno through and through – she even bore an uncanny resemblance to one who had long since passed, or so it was assumed. She knew the tale of her ancestor, Haruno Sakura, so very well. That woman was why she had chosen the path of the shinobi to begin with – who she had tried so hard to emulate, even before her parents had told her it was she they had named her after.

Sighing, Sakura broke the red, Konoha seal emblazoned on the scroll, a slight smile on her face when she glanced over the details of her latest mission.

“Your last mission, huh?” her mother murmured, padding up behind her to peer at the scroll. It wasn’t as if it were a confidential mission, and Haruno Mebuki always liked to know whereabouts she was headed, and when she would make it back.

“Seems like it,” she said, plonking herself down on the sofa, setting the scroll down on the short table before her, closing her eyes as she let out a harsh sigh. Part of her wanted to go to her sensei – he was Hokage – and beg for him to let her do a few more missions. The other part of her knew he would say _no._ Maybe he’d throw in an eye smile… Tell her how important she was to the village now that it was confirmed that Tsunade was moving. _She was wandering again._

Sakura felt her shoulders hunch down, and she bit back the tears she could feel rising again. Naruto and Sasuke weren’t being confined there. _So why did she have to be?_ She wanted to be more of a wanderer – a protector, just like her namesake had been.

There was a painting of her in fact, and it hung at the end of the main hallway, large as the very wall itself. Haruno Sakura, her ancestor, was painted in full glory – in full battle regalia, the armour as crimson as blood, a red sash embroidered with a white ring tied where her own forehead protector lay. _It was why she had gone for a red forehead protector sash._ Her green eyes almost seemed to glow in the lighting, her lips pulled back in a snarl as she lifted the flagpole bearing the blood red flag emblazoned with the white ring of the Haruno Clan.

It was a scene which had shivers running down her spine, not least because of those fanciful dreams she had once upon a time. But she had taken strength from them, not least in part thanks to the great blonde man who had instructed her and shown her how to throw a punch. _Subconscious memory relayed through dreams,_ her father had told her. They lived in a village of shinobi, and she was nothing special, even with the way her intelligence shone through.

Her shoulders sunk then, musing over days where he life had been so much simpler. When she wasn’t forced to stay within the walls of Konoha. “Get over it,” she muttered, sealing the scroll back up as she went to get everything she would need for her mission.

Thanks to paranoia – _thank you Kakashi-sensei –_ she always preferred to pack double, if not triple what she thought she would need, because weird and wacky situations often befell those of Team Seven, and unfortunately she was no exception to that very rule. She had striven to be prepared, not least because it was seemingly her last mission outside the walls, and if that didn’t set off the warning signals in the dimness of the very backs of her mind, she didn’t know what would. Though at least she would have Inner for backup, Sakura knew. _Even if she didn’t seem to be particularly talkative as of late._ Though Sakura supposed that she, too, hadn’t been particularly talkative.

After all, there wasn’t much to talk about when one was becoming increasingly unhappy with their situation. Well, when one resided in Konoha or another military dictatorship, or so she assumed. Dissent was not well liked there.

“Are you heading off straight away then?” her mother asked, wandering into her room as she readied her belongings, ready for her final adventure. _And what an adventure she hoped it would be…_ Enough to quell the wanderlust which had awoken in her far too late for her to indulge.

Sakura sighed, tucking her storage scrolls into their compartments. “It’s probably better if I get moving as quick as I can… then maybe I’ll pop by the nearest hot springs before I come back,” she said, pulling on her gloves, flexing her fingers within their constraints. “It’ll probably be the last chance I get to enjoy them… well, the ones outside of Konoha at least.”

“We’re proud of you, you know,” Mebuki said, and Sakura blinked a few times as her words sunk in. “So very proud… and it might be selfish of me and your father, but we’re unfortunately rather happy about your new appointment.”

She bit her lip then, glaring at the ground, unwilling to look her mother in the eye. _Because she knew, deep down, that part of her lusted after adventure. After excitement. After war._ Truly, she had never felt more alive than she had when battling against Uchiha Madara and Ootsutsuki Kaguya. Part of her missed it, which she supposed was where the wanderlust came from – to fill the void the war had made. “Thank you,” she murmured then, hating the part that begrudged her mother for her feelings over her new appointment. “For everything.”

“Be safe, Sakura-chan,” her mother whispered, fingers brushing against her arm, and Sakura almost flinched. _Asking a shinobi to be safe…_ She nearly laughed at the thought.

“I will be,” she murmured, wandering towards her favourite spot in the house, sighing yet again as she heard both her parents venture out into the garden – giving her the privacy she always wanted. She felt oddly foolish, speaking to a painting, but that painting, and everything she associated with it had given her the strength she had been chasing all the time. “So this is my last chance for an adventure,” she whispered, reaching out, her hand dropping away just shy of touching the figure forever enshrined in paint and canvas. “I wonder if you’d be disappointed… Mother said you were quite the free spirit in the tales which have been passed down… I guess I just learnt that part of my nature far too late.” Her hands curled into fists. “Here’s to hoping I have an adventure as wild as your last one. It’s ironic, you know… My last mission is going to be in the area you went missing all those years ago. I think it’s rather fitting. You died there, didn’t you? And that’s where my last vestiges of freedom will die too…”

Sakura closed her eyes then, forcing back the bitter tears which always rose at that thought as she edged away from the painting, and those _green-green_ eyes which felt like they were boring into her. It was funny how she’d been unnerved by that as a child, before the dreams. Before she’d learnt to stand up for herself. Before she drew strength from those jade green eyes so much like her own…

Really, she was the splitting image of her ancestor, though she probably still had a bit of growing to do. She felt rather _coltish_ compared to the figure in that painting whose enemies would probably run a mile from. Though her ancestor’s enemies, the Kurogane Clan, had died off long ago. It had been a blow to them, losing some of their greatest fighters alongside Haruno Sakura, and whilst the Haruno had rebuilt and turned away from the shinobi lifestyle… It was safe to say the same hadn’t happened for their once rival clan.

Though it was probably a good thing.

Otherwise they might have ended up in a feud like the Senju-Uchiha one. Sakura chuckled, clipping her bag to her back, calling out a brief farewell as she ventured out of her house. _It soon wouldn’t be her house anymore._ She was entering a new phase of her life. Change was inevitable.

So with the sun bearing down on her, she hurried towards the gates, stopping only to check out with those on gate duty. She was so very eager to leave Konoha behind, what with how those walls would be looming over her when she returned.

* * *

Branches passed underfoot as she took to the trees she so loved. Excitement flooded through her veins, and she hurried on, eager to reach her destination, eager to explore an area she had never seen before – because while she might have skirted the area with her team, she had never fully explored the place where her namesake was said to have died. Part of her wondered whether there would be some sort of memorial, but the realist inside her knew it was unlikely. The Haruno Clan had hardly been renowned or all that strong from the many tales which had been regaled to her over the years.

But they had been family, and their legacies lived on through her, or so she liked to assume, given she was the only shinobi now in their line. Sakura always found herself wondering whether they would be proud or disappointed – because by turning away from the shinobi life, that had ensured her clan’s survival. But the blood of shinobi was meant to run thick from parent to child. _She reckoned it had just passed over everyone in her family tree, saving all the shinobi-ness up for her to inherit._

_“You’ll be great, won’t you, little Sakura?”_ The phantasmal figure of Haruno Sakura who had once greeted her in her favourite, happiest dreams, popped up in her memories then, and Sakura felt tears well up in her eyes yet again at the memories of those happy times. When she had run about, staring at the figures of history come to life. But those happy dreams had left her before long – when the Haruno Sakura of her dreams sailed away, over a great ocean. _“Don’t follow us too soon, little Sakura…”_

Those had been the parting words to her, and then she had been left, sniffling as she stood, ankle deep in the waters, watching as the beautiful ship carried them away. She had been left behind, underneath the boughs of trees that shone silver and gold. Part of her supposed it was rather symbolic of her growing up. The figure of Haruno Sakura had left before her, and she was meant to catch up. And she was still doing that, because Haruno Sakura had cast a long shadow. But her catching up might be cut off sooner than later, _because of the damned hospital._ She loved healing people, but…

Sakura shook her head, pushing those thoughts away as she arrived at her destination, silently recalling the list of herbs she needed to pick as she left the treeline and bounded down into the field of long grass which swayed in the wind. _The mission could come later,_ she decided, the urge to _explore_ rising up inside of her. As well as the fact that she needed to find a good location to set up her base. She would be spending a couple of days at least picking the herbs – given she had brought preservation seals, like a sensible person, she wasn’t on a time limit. She could pick them and leisurely enjoy the last of her adventures.

“So let’s explore,” she mumbled, breaking the almost eerie silence which surrounded her as she walked through the field – wondering if there would be some sort of clue as to her ancestor’s final resting place. Her feet carried her onwards, eyes remaining sharp, both for threats and a good camping spot as she found herself venturing into the forest, like a natural born Konoha shinobi. They loved trees and, really, it showed.

But entering the forest was when she spotted it: a flash of pink hair, so much like her own.

Her legs moved of their own volition, chasing after that phantom image she felt like she had been searching for, for what felt like aeons. “Wait,” she whisper-called, chasing the image through the woods, and up the stream until she reached a waterfall – into which the flicker of pink hair vanished, and her legs kept on moving, like a puppet’s, and she had no control over them. She barely had time to realise there was a lip of sorts behind the waterfall, before her jump took her over the little ledge and she plummeted into the darkness of the drop beneath. Her heart pounded in her chest, feet and hands scrabbling for any sort of surface with which to stick her feet to as she fell and continued to freefall, but there weren’t any.

At least not until she plunged into the waters below. The same waters she hadn’t been able to see in the darkness surrounding her like a horrible fog. Terror and excitement flooded through her, as _something_ kept dragging her down and down into the depths of that water. Part of her was terrified, the other half of her waiting in anticipation. For what, she knew not.

Only that something big was happening.

So when the waters grew lighter and gravity seemed to shift… Sakura wasn’t entirely sure what to think at first as she righted herself from where she was then – upside-down under the water’s surface. Her lungs were burning by then, and she broke the surface of the water, sucking in a large lungful of air as the sun shone down on her, revealing she had surfaced in a river, rather than an underground pool like she had half expected.

And suddenly there was a voice in the back of her head then, and it whispered to her.

_“Welcome back.”_

**Author's Note:**

> SPORADIC UPDATES T_T


End file.
